The invention relates to electronic commerce, more particularly the invention relates to using consumable articles as barter or collateral security for use of privileged content transactions.
Electronic devices such as personal computers and personal data assistants (PDAs) are becoming more powerful and able to perform multimedia functions. These functions allow for the presentation of several multimedia content sources such as music, pictures, video, and other created works. In addition to more powerful computers, the Internet is becoming more pervasive and most computers and other electronic devices are able to interconnect. This interconnection occurs over phoneline, cable, satellite and other wired and wireless services. The ability to retrieve multimedia content via the Internet and to view, copy, print, play, or archive this content has created a tension between the owners of the content and users of multimedia equipped electronic devices. Because devices such as personal computers can be disconnected from the Internet and the multimedia content used remotely, the owners of the content cannot adequately monitor the use of their content and receive proper royalty or other pecuniary payments for its use. Further, some hardware manufacturers have designed low-cost electronic devices that allow for downloading multimedia content from the Internet and allowing the user to continually use the content remotely such as with xe2x80x9cMP3xe2x80x9d music playing devices. These low cost devices are rapidly being accepted and the potential for abuse of content owner""s proprietary rights is growing.
On difficulty in implementing a method of debiting for the use of proprietary content is that pecuniary payments tend to be very small on a per use basis and the transaction costs of processing credit cards or other credit information is often more expensive than the debit charge for the use of the content. Therefore, there is a need for a method to provide payment exchange efficiently and accurately when dealing with small financial transactions or micropayments such as per-use royalty based charges.
A consumable article includes a consumable item and a memory device. The memory device is organized to represent currency. Use of the consumable item causes the memory device to be reorganized. The consumable article is used in an apparatus that has a control circuit that can update the memory device to modify the amount of currency when the apparatus consumes the consumable item. The apparatus optionally includes a network interface coupled to the control circuit that interfaces to a clearinghouse for reconciling the amount of currency and use of the consumable item.